Pages

About / Contact

Robin D. Laws designed the
GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system, including such games as The
Esoterrorists and Ashen Stars. Among his other acclaimed
RPG credits are Feng Shui and HeroQuest. Recent highlights of his nine books of fiction are New Tales of the Yellow Sign, Blood of the City and The Worldwound Gambit. As Creative Director of Stone Skin Press he has edited such fiction anthologies as The New Hero, Shotguns v. Cthulhu, and The Lion and the Aardvark: Aesop's New Fables. Upcoming
projects include Hillfolk, the first game using the
DramaSystem RPG rules for riveting personal conflict. With longtime collaborator Kenneth Hite he podcasts weekly on, Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.

2 comments:

Hello Mr. Laws, first off i would like to thank you for replying to my first few questions a while ago. it have me +5 gamer geek cred.

i do have another question for you, regarding the use of story in game. i get that your big on using the game to weave a narrative, but haven't you found that the sheer (sometimes perverse) unpredictability of player action to be something of a stumbling block?

most story plot require a level of control and structure that a GM just doesnt have in his games (unless he's railroading). so how do you compensate for that? you need a way of including player choice into your narrative, even if those choices defy any traditional story structure. but you also need to keep things on track so the story doesn't flounder around and become too random.

About Me

Writer and game designer Robin D. Laws brought you such roleplaying games as Ashen Stars, The Esoterrorists, The Dying Earth, Heroquest and Feng Shui. He is the author of seven novels, most recently The Worldwound Gambit from Paizo. For Robin's much-praised works of gaming history and analysis, see Hamlet's Hit Points, Robin's Laws of Game Mastering and 40 Years of Gen Con.